‘Fascinating programme, tonight,’ opined the man behind
me – then promptly proceeded to fall asleep after the second song, so
that much of the evening was accompanied by his snore obbligato. Perhaps
this really was a soporific evening, but on the face of it, it should
not have been; the programme was a varied collection of songs by the
greatest English composers, sung by some of today’s most highly reputed
recitalists, but the feeling one was left with was that this is the
sort of thing that gets English song a bad name.

We began with Ian Bostridge and Christopher Maltman
in Britten’s realization of Purcell’s ‘I Spy Celia,’ a ‘delightful’
way to commence a recital, and that’s what it was. It was rather like
hearing Bostridge Major and Maltman Minor, bashfully essaying their
trial piece for the Junior Choir: I admit to having been ‘brought up’
on the, shall we say, rather more lubricious Purcellian style of singers
like Nigel Rogers, but this coyness was just too much – or rather, too
little. A line such as ‘I am redder, then I please her’ refers to something
other than assistance with a skipping rope or Matron’s instructions
as to how to tie a ribbon, but you’d hardly have known it.

Lisa Milne’s ‘Fairest Isle’ was almost equally uncomfortable:
I don’t know what has become of this soprano’s diction, but her habit
of omitting the final letter, sometimes even syllable, of many words
is, to say the least, worrying. Fortunately, her ‘Mad Bess’ gave a much
better impression of her talent, being suitably dramatic and much assisted
by Graham Johnson’s vivid accompaniment. Christopher Maltman gave a
suitably solemn account of Warlock’s ‘The Bayley Beareth the Bell Away,’
but I was left wondering, why this song, when there is so much of Warlock
that is so much more elegant and incisive? The first half ended with
Finzi’s setting of Shakespeare songs, ‘Let Us Garlands Bring,’ with
Maltman particularly successful in the ‘Twelfth Night’ songs.

The second half began with a motley collection of English
songs; I had expected ‘I Will Go with My Father A – Ploughing’ to be
taken by Bostridge, but this group was Milne’s, and I have to say that
this song just sounded weird as sung by her; some singers can make such
sentiments convincing, and some can’t. Songs by Bridge and Ireland fared
much better, but ‘She Moved Thro’ The Fair’ was, sadly, unmoving, and
both this and Quilter’s ‘Love’s Philosophy’ were affected by unfortunate
verbal slips, such as ‘went’ for ‘moved,’ softly’ for ‘dead’ and ‘moon’
for ‘earth.’ Well, one might paraphrase Shakespeare and say that the
singer, like the lover, has days when (s) he is ‘neither sick nor well.’

And so to the evening’s major work, Britten’s ‘Seven
Sonnets of Michelangelo’ which had its premiere at the Wigmore Hall
very nearly exactly sixty years ago. It was, of course, a nice idea
to set this work in its context, and such a masterpiece is always worth
hearing, but I have to say that Bostridge is not the ideal tenor for
it, whatever ‘beyond praise’ eulogies may be penned by those who judge
such things by extra-musical considerations. I’m not at all clear as
to what the introductory notes intended to convey by a remark like ‘…what
a Pandora’s box of tricks did their love unlock’ (about the relationship
of Britten and Pears) since when Pandora opened the box she set free
all the ills which were to beset mankind, with only Hope left inside,
and one can hardly number Britten’s works amongst the ills of the world
– however, the same writer does make clear that the core of this work
concerns ‘love from one man to another.’

Love of any kind is not much highlighted in Bostridge’s
cerebral, highly impassioned in terms of vocal gesture, beautiful sounding
but ultimately rather lazy interpretation, and the sheer enrapturing
ecstasy, the ear – ravishing expressiveness found in these words and
this music by Pears and Rolfe Johnson on disc, and by Ainsley in a recent
‘Voices’ broadcast, were all, to my ears, missing here. Bostridge’s
Italian is not the greatest, but that is not as important as the fact
that he leaves one entirely unmoved at moments which should involve
the listener at every level. There were some wonderful things here,
mainly in ‘Tu sa’ ch’I, Signor mio, and ‘Rendete a gli occhi miei,’
but the ultimate feeling was of detachment, and what should have been
nobility and grandeur interspersed with a slight edge of hysteria in
‘Spirto ben nato’ was ‘merely’ pleasant and accurate singing. I’m sure
that, come tomorrow, all the broadsheets will be full of foam – flecked
encomia, but there you have it; one can’t roll out of the Wigmore in
a state of bliss after each and every concert.